Consumers face myriad problems in biometric SIM registration

Following the court order to make a biometric re-registration of all SIM cards mandatory, consumers have made a beeline for completing the process.

The whole exercise concludes on Saturday.

However consumers are facing a hard time as many of their fingerprints do not match those on their NID records.

Officials engaged in the process told bdnews24.com that over 635,000 consumers applied for re-registration using fingerprints in the past week alone.

However over 6.2 million fingerprints did not tally with the national identity records.

Cox’s Bazar resident Minhaz Uddin faced this fate when he went for the re-registration of his two SIM cards. He has a government job and is posted in Jessore.

“I visited the local Upazilla office as instructed by the customer care. But election officials here asked me to go to the Upazilla office where I am registered as a voter. They declined to accept the fingerprints of those outside the Jessore Sadar Upazila.’’

Retired government employee Mridul Kanti Chowdhury’s left hand thumb skin is worn out. The impressions of his finger prints could not be ‘read’ by the scanner; he had to register the SIM in his wife’s name.

The Election Commission is yet to issue NID cards to those who became voters over the last two years. Consumers who fall within this bracket are clueless as to how to complete the process.

Reacting to this, district election official Monir Hussain told bdnews24.com, ‘’We are issuing numbers locally to those who are yet to get their NID cards. We are also collecting fingerprints. We are trying to extend every possible help.’’

No new SIM is being issued without collecting biometric samples of fingerprints since the December 16 announcement of the process. Besides, all existing SIM cards that were bought prior to the announcement must be mandatorily re-registered before the April 30 deadline.

The ministry has cautioned that unregistered SIM cards will be deactivated after the end of the deadline. 

Posts and Telecommunications state minister Tarana Halim had said that the process of biometric re-registration must be completed by April 30. The unregistered SIMs will be temporarily deactivated as a warning.

If the SIM cards go unregistered after the warning, they will be permanently deactivated, the minister has said.

The whole exercise is aimed at curbing crimes using SIM cards.